Hi everyone. Thank you for being here with us today and for taking the time.

We are very happy to be here at Havas HQ today with François Laroze, our CFO, and also Delphine Maye, our group head of IR, to present you the Havas H1 2026 results. First, Delphine is asking me that you take a moment to read the disclaimer.

Here is the agenda of our presentation. We believe it will last between 20 and 30 minutes, and then we'll have a traditional Q&A session.

If you look back at the first half of the year, we can say we delivered a solid performance. As you see on the chart, €1.3 billion net revenues, supported by solid organic growth, +2.5%, which is in the midpoint of the full-year initial guidance.

If you look at the adjusted EBIT, it's €150 million and representing a margin of 11%, a 30 basis point improvement compared to last year, which is also in the guidance. Beyond the numbers, what makes this first half performance particularly solid is the environment in which it has been achieved.

The global context remained volatile, marked by, of course, the situation in the Middle East and the uncertain macroeconomic environments. Our exposure to the Middle East, as is limited.

It's a little bit less than 2%, and while we saw some impact, of course, on the local activity, there has been no material impact on the group's financial statements. At the same time, our industry is undergoing significant transformation, with some consolidation at the end of last year, and of course, the rapid acceleration of and implementation of AI across our industry.

We truly believe that in this environment, scale alone is not a guarantee of competitive advantage. Our clients, as we can see, are increasingly expecting more integrated capabilities, more agility, and above all, measurable business outcomes.

This is why we believe Havas is particularly well positioned. As you see on the chart, we define ourselves as the strongest challenger in the market.

We are a stable, coherent, and agile group, with a clear strategy and our famous integrated model. This clearly reinforces our position as the best challenger, and it gives us confidence in our ability to create value for our clients and deliver sustainable growth.

This performance is built on a set of strengths that we have consistently developed over time. First and foremost, our clients that are at the center of our model.

We continue to build new business momentum during the first half, both globally and locally. Just among the highlights, it's not really an advertising win, but we have been part of a consortium that have won the organization of the Paris Marathon and Half Marathon for the next four years, it's strengthening our position in the fast-growing sports sector.

We'll talk about it when we refer to M&A. If you look at the Creative and Health side, we have been very happy to retain several long-standing clients' relationship.

I'm seeing Journées Particulières, which is a key moment for LVMH, a great Havas partner. We can also talk of Vive, Vivendi Healthcare, that has been retained during the first half, and a very important extension of the main contract with Sanofi on Health and Creative for the next two years, even if we have lost a smaller part of the contract with the media in the US that will transition at the end of the year.

The US is having a good momentum with the win of Farmers Insurance in a few weeks ago, which is a big client for Media in the US; of Vinted, which is launching in the US, who in Europe we know well. Vinted is a very strong company, and they are launching in the US with our media operation.

Also, I'm glad to highlight the first multi-market win for Horizon Global, the joint venture we have launched with the Bill Koenigsberg company, Horizon Media. We're happy, just six months after the launch, to have a first multi-market win.

This list, of course, is absolutely not exhaustive. Second, and also as important as our client, our talent.

We clearly are in a people-driven business, and in a world transformed by AI, we deeply believe one thing: at the end of the day, what truly makes the difference is people. Talent is clearly some of our most valuable assets.

That's why we are investing heavily in hiring top talent, attracting and retaining the very best, training everyone, supporting our teams, and equipping them, of course, with the best tools available on the market. This year, as you can see on these charts, we have attracted some of the best talents in the industry.

Third, our integrated model. We are very pleased to have been the first holding company to go through that pass of integration more than 10 years ago, 13 years ago exactly.

It's clearly a competitive advantage. We see the competition trying to catch up, but we are one step ahead in terms of integration, which is very important to bring a better clarity, efficiency, and effectiveness and speed for our clients.

Fourth, something very important at Havas that we discuss less in our industry. We have been discussing less in the industry in the past two, three years, but creativity remains at the heart of Havas.

We are pleased to have won more than 700 awards since the beginning of the year. Our conviction, we have been discussing that a lot, is that AI will transform how we produce, but it will not replace the need for strong ideas.

Ultimately, clearly, the strength of ideas is what is driving growth. Fifth, we are pursuing a disciplined, long-term investment strategy in data, tech, and AI.

We moved from €60 million of investments a year to €100 million a few years back. We are very pleased with the launch of AVA, our LLM portal, our Vermeil AI, our advanced production tools, part of Converge, great partnerships, talent training section of the company we have partnered with to train our talent.

By the way, I'm pleased to share with you that we have more than 90% of AI proficiency among our teams today. One thing that we wanted to highlight is that Havas has been the lead investor in Verve Labs.

Verve Labs, they define themselves as the next-generation agentic intelligence scale-up, combining real consumer interviews with AI-powered agents to help brands uncover deep behavioral insights at scale and translate them into actionable strategies and creative decisions. This company is great people, and we are pleased to have negotiated, in counterpart of this lead investment, an exclusivity to work with them at holding level.

Finally, our M&A strategy, which is a key part of our development: eight acquisitions this year, in addition of the participation in Verve, which is a lot. Four in the sports marketing industry, Havas Play, one in Germany, in the US, in Spain, and in Netherlands; two acquisitions in the corporate PR servicing, Edge Advisors, one in Spain and one in France; and two other acquisitions, one in data space and one smaller one participating in fashion shows for different brands.

With our solid fundamentals, expanded expertise, and continued investment in talent innovation, we can clearly say that the group is well positioned to pursue sustainable growth in 2026, and we are pleased to confirm our guidance. What we are seeing is the result of a model that continues to deliver year after year.

We've built a track record of steady, sustained improvement, with both net revenue and EBITA progressing consistently over the past four years now. This consistency is what gives us confidence in the resilience of our business and in our ability to deliver on this guidance.

Against this backdrop, and based on our performance in the first half, we are confirming what we have told you at the beginning of the year, an organic growth between 2% and 3% compared to last year, adjusted EBIT margin growing 30 to 50 basis points, payout ratio around 40%, and our mid-term financial targets where we try to reach between 14% and 15% of profitability in 2028. This is all for me, and François, you have the floor.

Thank you, Yannick. Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for joining for this Havas first half results conference call. I'm now pleased to walk you through the financial performance of this first half.

As usual, I will keep the presentation as concise as possible, invite you to refer to the different appendices for financial glossary and detailed definition and reconciliation. Let's start by the performance of the Q2 with a revenue of €724 million, representing an increase by 3.8%, this supported by the organic growth of 2.5%, a positive scope effect of 2.5%, and a negative foreign exchange of -1.2%.

The second quarter was therefore another solid quarter, with organic growth fully in line with the guidance given earlier. A point to highlight that the scope contribution increased during this quarter, reflecting the different acquisition Yannick referred to earlier.

Another important point is the evolution of the Forex. The impact is far less negative than during the Q1, as announced.

In Q1, we were at -5.8%, and we moved to 1 -1.2% for this second quarter. If we look at this performance by region, we see that North American region is very strong, with 6.4%, very satisfying level organic performance after already six quarters in a row of high organic growth, above 3%.

Europe delivered a moderate performance, with net revenue of €368 million and organic growth of 0.3%. Other markets, such as Germany, Italy, Portugal, were more dynamic.

Latin America returned to strong growth in the quarter, with net revenue of €52 million and organic growth of 7.7%. Asia Pacific remained negative, with net revenue of €59 million, organic growth negative by 3.5%, although this decline was less pronounced that during the first quarter.

It's mainly due to China, as already discussed, but also the conflict in the Middle East, which impacted the second quarter mainly. If we now move to the full half performance, the revenue is €1,362 million, it's a 1.2% growth.

The organic growth was equivalent to the second quarter, 2.5%. The scope contributed positively for 2.1%, while the Forex had a negative impact of 3.5%, mainly reflecting the evolution of currencies, including dollar, but also British pound and Indian rupee.

This figure means that halfway through the year, we are exactly where we wanted to be in terms of organic growth, with a solid contribution from scope, and despite this negative Forex impact. Let's have it by region for the whole half.

Same trend that the second quarter: very strong US at 6.9%; quite stable Europe at 0.7%; Latin America positive by 4%; and Asia Pacific, including the Middle East, negative by 4.8%. Now let's have a look at the revenue breakdown by business line: Havas Media 38%, Havas Creative 42%, and Havas Health 20%.

It's roughly the level of the previous announcement. For geographies, with North America still our first country led, followed by France 18%, UK 15%, quite stable compared with previous communication.

Same for the sector, with healthcare and wellness still our first sector with 29% of the revenue. Now let's move to the operational performance with the top part of the P&L.

The revenues is up by 0.6%. The cost rebilled to customers, or pass-through costs, went down from 62% to 54%.

Therefore, our net revenue increased by 1.2% compared with last year at €1,362 million. The improvement of the margin, you see the margin moved from €144 million to €150 million, mainly reflects the tight control over personnel costs, which decreased by 0.4% compared with this increase of 1.2% of our revenue, confirming our ability to generate continuous productivity.

In terms of EBIT margin, we moved, as Yannick said, from 10.7% to 11%, a 30 basis point increase, and it's exactly in line with our announcements. Now if we move to the down part of the P&L, down to the net income group share, the increase, as you see, in adjusted EBIT is 4.2%, but the increase of net income group share is 13.5%, mainly due to the evolution of the net financial expenses.

We moved from a negative figure of €17 million last year to negative of €7 million this year. The main variance comes from the exchange loss that we posted last year during the first half for €10 million, and this year we have not been impacted by any exchange loss, and therefore, we have been able to increase our net income group share by 13%.

Just a few words on income tax, where the effective tax rate has been 13.6% compared with 31.8% for the first half 2025, knowing that non-controlling interests were stable at €6 million compared with last year. Turning now to cash generation and cash use, the operating cash flow before working capital amounted to €139 million compared with €117 million for the first half 2025.

As usual, we are impacted by negative working capital variation during the first half, and this year, the working capital variation amounted to €212 million compared with €183 million last year. Again, it's a seasonal effect, and we know that during the second half, the working capital will increase a lot, as we did the previous years.

Another thing important to point out is the level of financial investments: €98 million have been spent this half compared with €25 million only last year through different reasons. The M&A strategy, €43 million of bolt-on acquisition; we have also invested in Groupe Louis Hachette for €34 million; and the Verve Lab, which Yannick referred earlier, for €19 million.

In terms of tax, no big change compared with last year. Same for the transaction with shareholder, with €78 million paid to the Havas shareholders, €7 million paid to the minority shareholders, and €7 million paid in buyback during this first half.

A very positive impact of exchange rate after the negative one of last year, and at the end, our net cash was a debt of €76 million at the end of June 2026. Here again, you will see the 76 can be compared with the 79 at the end of the first half 2025, it's quite stable.

This chart remind the evolution half after half. At the end of the year 2024, we had a net positive cash of 211.

At the end of 2025, we are 207. Again in 2026, our ambition is to come back in positive net cash available in the range of the previous year.

As a conclusion, before giving you the floor for questions, let's try to wrap up our financial roadmap, reminding that we have three pillars of development. Our organic growth, mainly driven by new business first, but also cross-selling, and you know how much we focus on cross-selling between the different clients through our integration policy, but also client retention, as we did for Vive or some others, and the launch of new services within Havas Play, Havas Market, or Pop, our production operation.

The second is still the dynamic bolt-on M&A strategy. We have been extremely active during this first half, with eight acquisition finalized.

We still keep on invest in this type of acquisition, which, I remind, will please impact on the EBIT ratio and contribute to the growth of the coming years. Third, and not the less important, the cost management.

We are permanently working hard on the cost management. First of them, the head count, and we refer to our head count, which have been stable, slightly down compared with the end of the previous year.

Also, we intensified the control of all expenses, including our investment in tools, in subscription, in AI, LLMs, that we focus precisely with the help of our new portal, AVA. What we say that we remain focused on the same priority: sustaining organic growth, robust delivery for our clients, attractive bolt-on strategy, and managing our cost.

Based on this solid first half performance, our current visibility, we confirm, as Yannick said earlier, that our first guidance for the full year would be confirmed, and same for our mid-term guidance 2028, for which we gave some KPI. Thank you for your attention, and now we are with Yannick at your disposal for any questions.

Sorry. Hi, this is Christopher Panker from Bernstein speaking.

I'm talking on behalf of Annick Maas. My first question: you seem to have won the Skechers media account recently, and it seems that you have some good momentum with some other mature accounts, which should give you some idea on the growth contribution for next year.

Could you please elaborate on that? The second question: you highlighted the Middle Eastern performance in your press release.

Would you be able to tell us something about what you expect for the Middle East for the rest of the year, and shall we expect a return of growth? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Christopher, for your questions, and say hi to Annick on our behalf. No, so that's true that we have a good momentum.

It's too early honestly to start talking about guidance for organic growth for next year. We still have a lot of pitch going on, some defensive, some offensive.

What we can tell you is we start to have a good view on 2026, and we believe we will achieve our guidance. To follow up on your next question for the Middle East, our assumption with François and the team is that the situation in Middle East will remain the same for the second-half that what it is currently.

In that context, once again, we still believe we will achieve our guidance for 2026. I don't know if you want to elaborate, François.

No,

I think he had also a question on Skechers, I understand, no? Media.

Media? Media,

yeah. No,

Skechers, it's not, I would say, the positive communication because we are not really allowed to comment, but there have been some announcements. What we can tell on this client that it's a multi-regional client, and that, according to the information we got for the time, it will enter in, let's say, in the top 20 of our clients with a less €100 million of billings.

It's roughly the idea for this client.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Yannick, François, Delphine. My first question is on Sanofi.

Yannick, you said that you had some extension of existing businesses with Sanofi in Creative, and that you only lost US media. According to Convergence, I thought you lost media globally.

When you put the extension of work plus the media losses, is Sanofi going to be a positive, neutral, or negative for next year? That's my first question.

My second one for François, if the FX rate stay the same for the rest of the year, what would be the impact on your net sales for full-year '26 in terms of FX? Then lastly, what's the benefit of hyperinflation accounting into LatAm organic 7.7% in Q2, which is your best geography?

Merci.

Yes, thank you Julien. I guess I will take the first question, François, and you'll take the second and third question.

On Sanofi, we had two contracts: one which is a Creative and Health contract, which represents the huge majority of our contract, that we have managed to extend for an additional period of three years. Unfortunately, we lost, but it's just the media in the US and not globally, even though the US is the largest country where you can do more advertising for pharma than in other countries.

It will represent a loss, clearly, and it's going to be around I don't know, François, if we can say a loss around 1%, but...

Yes, around 1% of the business.

...we lose and we win clients. At the end, the momentum is still very good.

We anticipated that loss, it will have no impact on 2026, and the team is very focused on new business. I would say that Farmers Insurance comes after Saint-Gobain, NCI, and lots of other clients, D2C, that have been won by the team in the US.

The momentum remains in the US despite, of course, this news. François, you want to...

Yes, a word on FX. As we announced during our previous call, the worst performance of the year clearly was the first half.

You see first quarter, -5.8%. Now we are at -1.2% for the second half.

Our guess today, if the currency remained at the level they are today, that we should be slightly negative for the whole year, let's say around 1%, which would lead to a positive impact on the second half. That's our guess, but one more time, it depends on the evolution of the currency.

Your third question, Julien, I'm not 100% sure to have caught it.

Inflation in the LatAm.

Inflation. We have one country in...

Yes, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Can you repeat your question, Julien?

No, it was hyperinflation accounting in LatAm.

No, it's almost zero for this first half. It's -€1 million in the impact, it's almost zero.

It has reduced a lot. We have been hit last year, but this year, it's almost zero.

Merci.

Bonsoir Delphine, François, and Yannick. Thank you for the presentation.

Three questions for me, please. Can you hear me well?

Yeah.

Yes.

Thank you. First, on North America, the region delivered another strong performance in Q2.

Could you give us a bit more color on what drove this performance, and is this the kind of performance we should expect in H2? Secondly, on Horizon Media, thank you for the comments on the JV.

If I remember well, at your full-year 2025 results, you highlighted a strong level of pitch activity. Could you give us an update of the outcome on those pitches, and when could you expect the JV to start making a meaningful contribution to your financial performance?

Lastly, for Yannick, you recently said in the press that at Cannes this year, you noticed clients were much more positive about agency role in an AI world compared to last year. Do you believe this positive sentiment is already translating into stronger new business, or greater pricing power, or how do you see this shift impacting your business?

Merci.

Yeah. No, thank you very much, Amorim.

Maybe to start with the third question about the client sentiment, just to give a bit of context, Havas, and it's fair to say for our peers as well, Havas has always been very big on data, tech, and technology. Since the beginning, Havas was the first company, alongside WPP in 2010 or 2011, to launch a programmatic buying tool, where we have automated the digital media buying.

It was not called AI, but it was quite similar to AI. When generative AI started to emerge at the end of 2022, I think Midjourney was around November and ChatGPT December, that's true that it has created revolution.

Two things happened. The first one is we decided very early on, early January 2023, to pivot to becoming an AI-first company, an AI-driven company, because we believed it could have a huge impact on our industry and on our clients' industry.

We did very well. I just don't want to be too long on that, but we've taken all the right decisions, done the right partnerships, made the right investments.

We have automated everything that we can automate. We've launched generative AI production, not just for print, but also for videos.

We are now disrupting the research space with the investment in Verve. Let's say that for the year 2024-2025, we had a lot of questions, a lot of discussions with clients, with investors, with analysts, with journalists, saying that AI will kill our industry.

I have been trying very hard to explain that AI was not a threat for the marketing industry, that it was in the best interest of clients to continue to externalize AI to agency, not to in-house, of course, and obviously not to replace us with agents or robots. For two years, I had the feeling to preach in the desert, as we say in the Bible.

Finally, my feeling is that for the past six months, and it was very impressive to see that at Cannes, we have no more questions on, first, survival of the agencies. We are no longer perceived as being AI losers, for sure.

Secondly, clients, they don't question anymore the fact that agencies are very well advanced in mastering AI, in harnessing all AI capabilities. My belief, maybe it's too early to say, but I think at the end of the day, AI will be something positive for the agencies.

First, we are implementing AI in our own organization, and then we are helping our clients transform themselves with AI. We have developed tons of capabilities in that space.

I think the sentiment is much more positive, not just from the clients, but also from all the different stakeholders. Then to come back on your two questions, maybe, François, you want to talk where the performance in North America is coming from and a word on the JV?

Yes, on North America, let's remind that we have very good performance of Creative and Media, because we have the fruit of the wins of the end of the year 2025, beginning 2026. Let's remind the clients we refer to: Saint-Gobain, NCI, TTC, and all these clients have largely contributed to the performance.

The second reason is clearly the performance of our new company launched in the US two years ago, Uncommon, which have a good success in attracting new clients, iconic clients, including Meta or Under Armour. It has been contributed.

Concerning Health, Health has done very well in terms of this existing molecules. Nevertheless, there have been some molecules which have been stopped by FDA after phase three, and therefore, we have not been able to go to the launch of the new molecules.

That the reason why Health grew at a lower pace that the two other business units during this first half. It has been mostly driven by Creative, Media, common clients, and by some nice wins in creativity.

Concerning Horizon Media, yes, we referred to many pitches. We have pitched a lot during the first half.

As we say, we have this important win we already described. We have today in the pipe some of quite nice brands in which we consider we could have wins in the coming quarters.

Hopefully, to answer precisely your demand, we should have a positive impact starting 2027 on this JV. Let's remind that the JV is a very simple and no-cost type of organization, if we win, we are very happy because we have new clients, but we have not invested at all into this JV.

It can only be a plus for our revenues and EBIT next year.

Thank you, Amorim.

Yes, thank you. Good evening.

Three questions from my side as well. Thanks for the color on the growth in the US.

Could we have a little bit more color on the growth by discipline at group level, Media, Creative in particular, and also the healthcare business? Then the second question, just to follow up on the comments, François, on the healthcare business in the US being growing a little bit less than the other two activities, can you say whether the growth in the second quarter was similar to the first quarter, or was there any significant difference?

Then last question just on LatAm, just noticed, if I'm right, that the reported revenue, the difference between reported revenues and organic revenues was strongly positive, reported revenues twice the growth of organic in the second quarter. Usually there's a currency drag, or we've become used to that, I guess it's an M&A effect, but could you just explain why there is that positive gap?

Thank you.

I think on the first question, the answer I gave you for the US flavor is roughly the same at group level. As you may know, the most of our healthcare, let's say 60% or 70% of the healthcare business, come from the US, the remaining being mainly the UK.

We have the same kind of trend, with quite active and fast-growing Media and Creative business all over the world, and healthcare growing at a lower pace. It's the same trend for the whole group that the one I described in the US.

In terms of quarter-by-quarter, there is no negative trend on the second quarter. The pace of growth was roughly the same during the two quarters for healthcare, but again, at a lower level that the two other business units.

On LatAm, if you refer to the growth of the quarter, I think again, it's not related to inflation. We have a nice wins in Brazil, nice win in Argentina, the fruit of our acquisition in Argentina as well.

It's real organic positive evolution, and we remain, I would say, confident to keep on delivering positive organic for the second half in LatAm.

I understood that, but on the reported revenues in LatAm, I think reported revenues if my numbers are correct were up about 15%. Was there more than an M&A benefit in LatAm in that quarter, or low or positive currency impact?

We will check with all the figures to give you a precise answer, Conor, but clearly it's the difference between the organic and the reported is due to the acquisition of DON, which is a creative agency that was acquired at the end of last year and which has done quite well during the first half. We'll give you the full detail.

Perfect. Thank you.

No, thank you very much for making the time. As you may have seen, we are satisfied with the first half results.

We delivered the guidance, 2.5% organic, the EBIT is for everything 30 basis points. We are also very pleased, we didn't spend too much time on it, on the growth of the EPS, +13.5%, which is very positive.

We are looking at it very carefully, and we confirm our guidance for the second half. Thank you for making the time, and enjoy summer.